


i came to win or lose with you

by laikaspeaks



Series: FE3H Drabble Collection [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Dancing, Dragon!Byleth, Edeleth week 2019, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22239505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laikaspeaks/pseuds/laikaspeaks
Summary: The 2019 Edeleth prompts, done late as you could possibly do them.Day 1 - First dance - In a world where Edelgard lived a peaceful life and Byleth is nothing more than a mercenary's daughter, ninteen-year-old Edelgard runs into Byleth after sneaking to a local harvest festival.Day 2 - Allegedly - Edelgard is looking to hire a very specific kind of hacker, and there is only one up to the job - Byleth, the so-called Ashen Demon. Cyberpunk AU.Day 3 - Crowned - Emperor Edelgard sneaks out of camp to meet Byleth, the symbol of all she set out to destroy. feat. dragon!Byleth
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Series: FE3H Drabble Collection [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553494
Comments: 31
Kudos: 181





	1. in love with the night

“Let’s go, honey, one dance.”

“I don’t think I will.” Edelgard said patiently. She was seriously considering throwing this man into the nearest horse trough and giving up on this outing altogether. She didn’t sneak out of camp to deal with men with whiskey breath and no boundaries.

“Come on, just one -”

A hand closed on his shoulder and tugged him back. He tensed, ready to swing - and drew up short when he turned to see the woman at his back. “Oh, uh… heeeey Byleth.”

Byleth merely smiled pleasantly. “Zach, if you keep bothering the lady she’s gonna run out of patience. I have a feeling she’ll hurt you more than Jeralt will if he sees you botherin’ the locals.” 

She was a head shorter than him, but that easy, good-natured confidence made her seem to take up all the space between him and Edelgard. Her hair was dark and wild as her eyes that glinted in the torchlight, and Edelgard's heart skipped a beat.

“Ugh, whatever pipsqueak.” He ruffled the girl’s hair, and she elbowed him in the ribs, and it turned into a mini good-natured tussel that ended with him heading further down the bar. Edelgard didn't take her eye off of him until he leaned across the splintered wood to order another drink.

“Sorry about that.” Byleth ran a hand through her hair to straighten it, offering Edelgard a sheepish smile. “Zach’s a friendly drunk, he’ll be kickin’ himself tomorrow for being an ass.”

She was wearing armor at a dance, standing out sharply from the local farmers in their brightly colored cottons and embroidered wool. It would look silly if it weren’t for the ease with which she wore it, as if she were born with armor and sword. Her hand settled absently on the place where a sword should hang, her muscles tensing with the motion. Oh. 

“Thank you.” Edelgard said, tearing her eyes from the other woman’s arm and - no she was looking at her shoulders now. 

She noticed. There was no way she didn’t notice, with that cocky curl of her lips. “What’s your name? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“...Edie. I’m just… passing through.” 

If she caught the hesitation she said nothing. 

“Byleth.” She smiled and offered her hand, palm up. “Wanna dance?”

This was her one night. Edelgard could jump in both feet first, or never jump at all. And what was the point in wasting all her trouble now? She took Byleth’s hand, purposefully sliding her fingers over her palm, the way Dorothea promised would make all the girls blush. “You’ll have to teach me. I don’t know this one.” 

Oh. That smirk didn’t drop, not a flicker in her face, but a beautiful flush spread over the high curves of Byleth’s cheekbones. “It would be my honor, my lady.”

Cute, cute! Edelgard couldn’t bite back a giddy giggle, feeling powerful for the first time in a way that didn’t involve the Hresvelg name or an axe and shield. She let Byleth guide her out into the streets, out into that little town alive with sound, and tried not to blush herself at the hand settling on her waist. At first she was clumsy at the unfamiliar steps, so different from the somber dances popular at court. But Edelgard was never one to give up easily, and Byleth was a patient teacher. She was a better instructor than Edelgard ever had for dance, patiently breaking down the sets of steps and then slowly adding them together. Byleth made the complex simple and made the simple even easier. 

Slowly, slowly their speed increased with the music. The world reduced to a whirl of color, an ebb and flow between one song and the next. They danced until she was stumbling with laughter, until the arms around her waist and the other girl laughing into her neck felt like the focal point of the turning of the world. 

For the first time Edelgard danced with her whole heart. For the first time, she fell in love. 


	2. i haven't met a locked door yet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edelgard is looking to hire a very specific kind of hacker, and there is only one up to the job - Byleth, the so-called Ashen Demon. Cyberpunk AU.

She followed the coded tracker to a scruffy, crumbling office building in the lower tiers. If even a thread of sunlight made it this far below the soaring skyscrapers of Upper Enbarr, it was immediately crowded out by ad screens, neon and streetlights. 

The door was nondescript... other than the fact someone had long ago taken a heavy object to said door, and tattered duct tape plastered a hole where there used to be a room number. Edelgard opened the door, and found the office was in much better shape than the exterior. It was more of a standard office than she expected, battered but clean. Edelgard surreptitiously checked for any Glamor programs operating in the office… but to her surprise, there was nothing. Even the plant in the corner was actually real, if desperately in need of water. 

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” The single occupant stared at her blankly over a handheld game console.

“You’re the hacker?” Edelgard checked the next name on the list scrolling over her vision. “Byleth?”

An unusual name, but then hackers rarely used their real credentials. They were criminals after all, and all the more fiercely pursued as Fodlan moved into the peak of her technological age. A hacker could kill a man as easily as drain his bank accounts, should they so desire.

“Who’s asking?” The girl swept a wayward lock of hair behind her ear, revealing several piercings. 

It was hard to reconcile the image of the hacker outlaw with this woman. She wasn’t more than two or three years older than Edelgard for one… for another she was very pretty. Her features were delicate, with dark eyes and wild, coarse dark hair. Even with the pallor of a lower city dweller and dark bags under her eyes did little to take away from her looks. The odds were that they were even real - her features didn’t have the sculpted perfection of the surgically enhanced. 

Not like Edelgard herself.

“I want to hire Byleth for a job. Is that you?”

“Allegedly.” Byleth tilted back in her computer chair with an ear splitting creak, twirling a pencil between the mechanical fingers of her right hand. It was some beautiful work, Edelgard noted, certainly not a standard issue prosthetic. The delicate joints flowed smoother than human limbs would allow, the bare metal polished to a satin smoothness that glinted under the buzzing fluorescent lights. It was hypnotic. 

“I came to see your work, and then we’ll talk about the job.”

“Are you saying you want a demonstration?” Those blue-glass eyes revealed nothing, but her tone was flat enough to induce blunt trauma. “No. This isn’t a bakery and I don’t give free samples. Go ask someone else.”

“I’ll pay you for your time. Ten thousand credits just for the test run.” Edelgard flicked out the untraceable chip she procured just for this deal, and Byleth caught it with her biological hand.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly.”

Byleth sighed, and gestured some vague shapes in the air. Then nothing more. 

Edelgard frowned. “Is it working?”

Edelgard frowned. “Is it working?”

Edelgard frowned. “Is it working?”

Edelgard frowned. “Is it working?”

“Is it working?” Her words unspooled unwillingly, her body performing the same gestures repeatedly like a broken machine. Edelgard half expected it to feel horrible, but it was unnervingly natural. As if she were doing it herself. It was merely the repetition that was odd. 

Byleth’s voice betrayed no emotion, she barely seemed interested in what was happening before her eyes. “Satisfied?”

Edelgard clenched and unclenched her shaking fist before her eyes. Even if these abilities suited her at the moment… she could see why these types of hackers were so universally reviled. “Almost. Why was I aware the whole time? I need a full rewind.”

“It would do no good as a demonstration if you weren’t aware it was happening.” Byleth took a sip from a mug, frowned, then carefully set it aside. “Trust me, the targets won’t remember a thing.”

“I won’t pay you this kind of money on half-proven skill. Do it again.”

Byleth raised a brow. “You’ll owe me more credits.”

“Do I strike you as a cheap woman, Byleth?”

“...Fine.”

It was even more surreal than the first time, because rather than feeling her body going through the motions she felt nothing. Merely watched Byleth flicker from one side of the room to the other, and suddenly she was holding a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. The coffee maker in the corner was still loudly sputtering away. 

It was an instant for Edelgard, but a glance at the mechanical watch on her wrist revealed that ten minutes had passed.

“Good enough?” 

Byleth passed her a second cup, and Edelgard took an absent sip. It was made exactly how Edelgard preferred her coffee. Far too much milk and sugar, she was embarrassed to admit - Edelgard never really enjoyed coffee as much as tea and tended to make it more bearable by covering up the taste. Almost everyone tended to pour her coffee black, assuming that someone with her personality had no need for such frills. She must have made it herself before Byleth rewound her memories.  
  
Terrifying. And exactly what she needed.

“Excellent.” She needed someone with this very rare, very illegal ability. Her life may very well depend on it. “You're hired.”

“For what? You’re waving around too much money for this to be a simple job.”

“My uncle is going to try and assassinate me. I need you to finish him first.”


	3. i will crown you with whatever grows prettiest

'I've been looking everywhere for you!" There was one thing that the Emperor couldn't command, with armies or force of arms or the powers of her crest, and Edelgard wasn't sure if that fact was comforting or not.

"Couldn't stay too close. The patrols have been going further out."

Byleth was seated cross-legged on a boulder, her wings stretched out and tilted to better catch the evening sun. The dragon's wingspan took up half the tiny clearing, the delicate skin stretched between the bones of her wings shimmering with shifting moods of blue. Like the ocean, never quite the same shade from one day to the next. Edelgard tried very hard not to remember running her hands over them, the tiny scales at once smooth and pebbled like fine beadwork.

Once Edelgard looked she couldn't quite tear her eyes away. The dragon had curled horns like a ram, and her taloned feet flexed against the stone. When she glanced up, Edelgard could see her pupils draw to a thin slit in the bright daylight. Her face was almost human, if humans were beautiful in the way that stone carvings of the goddess were beautiful. Everything about Byleth - even the parts that superficially resembled a human - was so transparently removed from humanity.

The church would call Byleth one of the holy dragons, an emissary of the goddess, but all Edelgard could see was that crooked smile with a flash of fang. The divine briefly giving away to something quiet and soft and within her reach.

"What are you doing?" Edelgard asked, ducking under a wing to catch a glimpse of what was holding all of Byleth's attention.

"Flower chains." The large, coarse hands with their scales and claws were surprisingly clever at their work, weaving small wildflowers with larger blooms. "Got bored waiting."

Edelgard perched on the rock and leaned in to get a closer look. She recognized some of them from the imperial gardens - probably a fugitive from some long-abandoned homestead. Byleth hummed to herself, tail flicking against the ground in an irregular beat. Her hair was wilder than usual, and it took every ounce of Edelgard's self-control not to comb it out with her fingers. She focused on sinking into the quiet between them, the small refuge she allowed herself despite all the reasons she shouldn't.

She almost didn't notice Byleth turn, but she couldn't miss the garland dropping onto her head. Or the hands that hesitated just short of working it into place.

"Is this okay?"

Edelgard swallowed. "Yes. Of course."

At first Byleth was simply neatening it up, twining the flowers around Edelgard's crown. But somewhere along the line her touches started to linger, her gaze searching for disapproval. Edelgard only tilted her head, giving Byleth better access to the place her buns were secured.

Her hair fell down around her shoulders with only a little coaxing, claws scraping gently against her scalp drawing out a shiver. Byleth murmured an apology, but Edelgard found reassurances caught in her throat. Byleth wove the flower crown into her hair with such simple, obvious pleasure in the contact, her expression softening once more into that almost-mortal warmth. There was honeysuckle among the flowers as well, Edelgard realized, the scent twining close and closer.

The horned crown fell in the grass, forgotten.


End file.
